"[Needless, avoidable deaths are recurring] with unsettling regularity, not randomly, not rarely [in Canada's hospitals; a function of choked and overwhelmed emergency departments]."

"[The dark reality is a] hidden pandemic [of excess deaths, higher than] citizens of a highly developed country have a right to expect."

"A patient waits for hours in a Canadian emergency department, deteriorates quietly, sometimes visibly, then dies before being assessed, [most often from a heart attack, stroke or sepsis]."

Report published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine  

"People are despondent. They're scared that there are going to be bad outcomes and they're going to feel responsible. But they don't see any respite."

"[Emergency departments are now in a] chronic disaster state; [the capacity required to care for patients] patently inadequate."

"It's got completely out of control and meets the formal definition of disaster -- a serious disruption of functioning, that exceed the ability of available resources and results in excess harm -- on a daily basis."

"When there is crowding all over the hospital, it leads to chaos in the ED and bad things predictably happen in that setting."

"Eventually our system will just be seen by the public as unsustainable. I've got many friends who once believed that our health system was a defining feature of being Canadian, who are losing faith in the system."

"Until we are able to translate the real lives lost in this hidden pandemic into terms that will resonate emotionally with the public -- that will make them say this is untenable -- we won't get anywhere."

"We are failing to deliver on a defining national priority. The feds have to do something."

Dr. Alecs Chochinov, professor of medicine, University of Manitoba 

Across Canada, emergency rooms are routinely operating beyond 100 per cent capacity. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia/File

 

In actual fact, the feds have 'done something'. They have helped to destroy that 'defining national priority' which they fail to recognize as one of their most vital responsibilities. The federal government -- the Liberal government, in all its successions -- views immigration as a far more important national priority than national security, much less the social benefits in health and welfare that any responsible government, particularly that of a recognized 'first-world' economy must see as its primary function. 

 

The Liberal government is obsessed with trade and prosperity for the nation, to be sure, alarmed at the falling birth rate, determined not to exploit the country's natural resources, and eager for a workforce that will continue to labour mightily to feature its special green and social welfare programs that appear to exclude the well-being of its population in its focus on promoting Critical Race Theory, DEI and wokeism. Where transgender rights and economic migrant intake reign supreme.

 

Under Canada's Liberal governments immigration, refugee intake and migrant acceptance have ballooned to the point where the government departments responsible for administering the programs along with verifying the status of applicants with background checks for undesirable affiliations and actions have gone by the board. Where due to indifference and lax attitudes toward security, Canada is a great place to launder financing of terrorism abroad.

 

Where on the streets of Canada operatives of the very terrorist groups that have made their deserved presence on the federal government's own proscribed terrorist lists walk about freely to harass and threaten Canadians. Where an estimated 600 agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij police have a presence, enjoying Canada's comfortable way of life. Where members of Hezbollah and Hamas have integrated themselves, along with the Muslim Brotherhood through infiltration of the country. 

 

Where they engage in the illicit drug trade, human smuggling, money laundering and the presence of illegal cryptocurrency shops that illegally send money abroad, funding terrorist groups as well as Iran's IRGC itself. Refugees brought in from Syria and the Palestinian territories to Canada so overwhelm the system of verification and application approval that scant attention is given to background checks resulting in Canada hosting as permanent residents and citizens, individuals highly connected with terrorism.

 

The fallout of the immense numbers of immigrants, refugees, migrants and foreign students on study visas that added millions to the Canadian population in just the last few years has had the added effect of straining the country's social welfare system, its public schools, housing, and hospital-medical facilities. There is a dire shortage of medical personnel; doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians and hospital beds. Schools are burdened with children learning English, and bringing with them the cultural attitudes of their home countries. 

 

"A review is launched, a statement is issued. Regret is expressed, perhaps a policy adjusted."

"Then the system resumes its normal operation."

"When patients stop moving, they accumulate. And the place where they accumulate is the only part of the system that cannot refuse entry [the Emergency Room]."

Report published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine  

 

Professor Alecs Chochinow and his colleagues produced a commentary on the state of Canada's health care system, stressing the stories behind media reports of people dying after waiting long hours for care in hospital emergency rooms. Their report was published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine. In it, they produce startling figures and statistics as well as individual examples of the hapless failure of the country's universal medicare system.

 

As a result of emergency department crowding, they point out, an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 Canadians die each year. Deaths take place in the ED, on the wards or following a patient's release from  hospital prematurely to the patient's actual need for continued hospitalization. A 55-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest after waiting 11 hours in an emergency department in Winnipeg, awaiting admission to a hospital room. Another 44-year-old man died after spending 8 hours with chest pains in an Edmonton emergency room.  

"[It's not uncommon to have people in] 10-out-of-10 abdominal pain with no pain medication, no comfort and nowhere to sit for 12 hours in our emergency department because we can't them them in."

Alberta physician Dr. Paul Parks 

 A list of at least six potentially preventable deaths occurring over a two-week period was compiled in Alberta, including a 50-year-old man who perished from a bacterial blood infection causing multiple-organ failure. Emergency rooms across Canada routinely operate beyond 100 percent capacity; 30 to 40 stretchers and cubicles occupied by people assessed and 'admitted' to hospital are placed there awaiting an empty bed on a ward; beds filled with patients no longer requiring care, but nowhere to go to; in long-term care, or home care, or rehab.

Staff burnout, delayed diagnoses, errors and excess deaths result from this kind of crowding, with crowded emergency departments seen as proxies for crowded and dysfunctional hospitals. The federal government shrugs; health is a provincial matter. Yet the Canada Health Act points to timely access to care as a priority.

The emergency department of the Rockyview General Hospital is pictured in Calgary. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)